[http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/gummiboot Gummiboot] is a new UEFI bootloader written by Kay Sievers. It is simple to configure, but can only start EFI executables, such Linux (with CONFIG_EFI_STUB enabled), grub.efi, and such.

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[http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/gummiboot Gummiboot] is a UEFI boot manager written by Kay Sievers and Harald Hoyer. It is simple to configure, but can only start EFI executables, the Linux kernel (with CONFIG_EFI_STUB enabled), grub.efi, and such.

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Revision as of 17:20, 8 October 2012

Gummiboot is a UEFI boot manager written by Kay Sievers and Harald Hoyer. It is simple to configure, but can only start EFI executables, the Linux kernel (with CONFIG_EFI_STUB enabled), grub.efi, and such.

Note:

In the following steps replace $esp with path to your EFI System Partition, which is normally mounted on /boot/efi (although some users have it on /boot directly).

where /dev/sdX is the drive and Y is the partition number of your UEFISYS partition.

Note:efibootmgr can be used only when already booted in UEFI mode. If you do not have another UEFI bootloader set up, you can either run gummiboot.efi from the UEFI Shell, or copy it to the "default" location $esp/EFI/boot/bootx64.efi for x86_64 systems.

Configuring

The basic configuration is kept in $esp/loader/loader.conf, with just two possible configuration options:

default – default entry to select (without the .conf suffix); can be a wildcard like arch-*

timeout – menu timeout in seconds. If this is not set, the menu will only be shows when you hold the space key while booting.

Example:

$esp/loader/loader.conf

default arch
timeout 4

Note that both options can be changed in the boot menu itself, which will store them as EFI variables.

Adding boot entries

Note:

If you have separate partitions for /boot and /boot/efi, you must copy the kernel and initramfs to the EFI partition. Gummiboot does not support loading kernels from other partitions than itself. See the section below on how to automate this.

Gummiboot searches for boot menu items in $esp/loader/entries/*.conf – each file found must contain exactly one boot entry. The possible options are:

title – operating system name. Required.

title-version – kernel version, shown only when multiple entries with same title exist. Optional.

title-machine – machine identifier (usually first few letters from /etc/machine-id, shown only when multiple entries with same title+version exist. Optional.

For Linux, you can specify linux path-to-vmlinuz and initrd path-to-initramfs; this will be automatically translated to efi path and options initrd=path – this syntax is only supported for convenience and has no differences in function.

You can also add other EFI programs such as \EFI\arch\grub.efi or \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\Bootmgfw.efi (the Windows 7 boot manager). The EFI Shell, if installed, will be shown automatically.